Review Summary: Underwhelming and Embarrassing.
Drake…what do you even say about the man? Well I have a lot to say. Now you might think that I am about to waste your time shitting on drake and repeating the same talking points that can be used to question drakes credibility as an artist. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. Drake has really won me over with this new album. with the release of certified lover boy I am now a certified lover of "the boy". First things first, Drake has done a lot for the community. He’s come up out the hard and unforgiving trenches of the 6 yet still has mob ties and deep shooters. Drake has created lot of cool nicknames for himself like “the boy duddus”, “papi”, “voodoo child” , “dada”, the and “the 6 god” which gives me goosebumps when I say it. It's really swag and not cringe at all when people come up with nicknames for themselves and try to act like other people came up with them instead. Drakes spent countless hours mentoring 16 year old girls, showing he is a true feminist and a philanthropist. All of these things prove that drake really is the Champaigne papi. Fuck me I can’t do this anymore drake sucks balls and is a complete clown who tries to artificially create an image about himself that nobody over the age of 16 (the average age of the girls drake talks to, ironically enough) buys. Certified Lover Boy is his latest release and it somehow failed to reach my rock bottom expectations. This album exists in the image of its creator, in other words, it’s a certified fucking joke.
For an artist that tries so hard to project that he’s a gangster with mob ties, Certified lover boy certainly backtracks on drake’s no-nonsense MO. The bars here are embarrassingly corny even for drakes standards. The less said about lines like “You’re a lesbian, girl me too” the better. Perhaps that makes it even more surprising that this 21 track album is some of drakes most bland, repetitive, and uninspired content yet. “Way 2 sexy” is an unfunny and annoying excuse to make a TikTok anthem. “Girls want Girls” is another song that just seems to copy the drake formula and spin in circles. Drake ducked Pusha T for 3 years only to deliver the most tepid of shots on “7am on Bridle Path”. The subject matter is unorganized, lukewarm, and repetitive. On one track drake will brag about running the streets and being the toughest gangster alive then in the same track will talk about how hard it is to be a rich 34 year old celebrity and how he wears thigh high socks during sex. The production is at best adequate and at worst sluggish and unexciting. The beats are so sleepy that DJ Akademics aka the biggest Drake ass eater in the world fell asleep on stream during the listening party. No I'm not joking this actually happened. This album sorely lacks captivating moments, energetic flows, and memorable beats. Every track here feels like a Scorpion B-Side and Scorpion was just Views B-Sides. Drake has refused to grow or evolve his sound since like 2016 and this is further proof that he is just coasting and not giving a shit about making exciting or thought provoking music. Certified Lover Boy is certainly his most horny record Drake pretty much just tells the listeners what his fetishes are which is an interesting artistic choice to say the least. I don't even mind that Drake wants to publicly be a femboy now but it's ironic cause he's spent the last 5 years trying to force everyone that he was this rugged, cold-blooded thug and then still tries to do so on the same album that he rejects that image in favor of said saidboy/emo teenager vibe. I also don't get how Drake can rap about how he deserves "respect" and then drops the worst record in his discography while beefing with Kanye who actually released a respectably good album. Certified Filler Trash might be the most generic and watered down pop-rap album of the year if not of the decade.
Normally at this part of the review I’d try to give some counter points and discuss things drake did well. It's incredibly difficult to do this, however, because I have to literally scrape the bottom of the barrel to find any crumb of effort or fucks given by Drake on this record. The feature by Travis Scott is solid I guess but just makes drakes verse on the same beat look much worse by comparison. "No Friends in the Industry" has single potential and Drake has decent flow here, but this just feels too repetitive and filler-ish to be a lead single. Even a good chunk of the features are half-baked, Jay-Z gives his most uninspired verse in forever just a week after dropping a decent verse on Kanye West's "Jail". 21 Savage's verse sounds like a posthumous iPhone demo which is strange because 21 Savage just dropped some of his best work yet with Savage Mode 2 last year. This is easily drakes most phoned in project and drakes been phoning in his projects since 2015. THIS is the album he delayed 8 months because he “blew out his ACL” and was too busy doing "Stranger Tings" with 17 year old Millie Bobbie Brown (which the song "Fuckin Fans" is about). Absolutely pathetic.
Every song here is meaningless, hollow, safe, and forgettable. The most memorable thing about this album isnt even the music, its the laughably bad cover art. Kanye’s black square was 100 times better than this abomination. Also for Drake stans who tried to cancel Kanye for bringing in controversial artists like DaBaby and Marilyn Manson, Drake one ups this by featuring R-Kelly on this album. No I’m not joking R fucking Kelly has a writing and production credit on this record. Drake fans will try to claim that the only reason why this album sucks is because its bloated and that the best 12 tracks on this would make for a good project. Unfortunately that’s simply not true a 12 track version version of this would still be lifeless garbage. This is because Drake's passion for making music just seems to have evaporated. I really wanted Drake to surprise me on this record with something grandiose, something fresh, something that challenges me as a listener. Despite my hopes, there is literally nothing unique to analyze on this record whatsoever except that Drake (who is a 34 year old grown ass man) identifies as a teenager, is into wearing skirts, and probably enjoys getting whipped by a leather-bound dominatrix. I'm not here to kink shame but it's so funny seeing Drake just struggle to express thoughts other than "im a badass" or "im sad and horny". This record is so trash that it made me slightly appreciate dark lane doo doo tapes for at least having songs that I didn’t fall asleep to. Drake should be very lucky he dropped the same year as Pop Smoke's Faith or Maroon 5's JORDI or else he'd have the worst record of the year. In the words of a gullible /r/hip hop heads user who thought this record wouldn't be trash for some reason , “I can’t believe I wasted weed on this”. This is based and a fact. This is the word of the biggleboys.
